the return: slightly less sad_, slightly more winslow
 

Good evening, everyone. Been lurking a bit lately again, thought I'd give a hello. I'm not terribly known around here, I guess, as I mostly lurk and disappear for stretches, but hello anyways. Nice to meet, or re-meet you.

I'm just finishing up my last semester at community college. I'm a couple months from turning 31, and I've been accepted to a real university for the fall. It's been a busy year, and it just keeps getting busier as I finalize admissions stuff, apartment shop to move to the university town, make sure i can pay for this mess, consider packing up my hoarder-esque apartment, and all that other business that comes with university. I'm kind of terrified.

What's been occupying your time off the internet, cellar?

Hi.

Time off the internet? Sorry, could you expand on that please?

Hi Winslow!

Sounds like you're grappling with life. :thumb: Onya!

Let us know how the study goes.

Hi winslow. I'm glad you are less sad :)

Hey :) Thanks. I try.

I know it's.. difficult to think of time pried away from the magic computer box, isn't it? I try to stay on the thing and avoid The Big Blue Room so long as I can, but life keeps happening to me anyways.

:greenface crapflood follows :greenface
I am... sort of, yes, grappling is a term. It's not been easy. Working my way from near the east coast USA to the west coast, slogging in crap jobs that still give me nightmares half a decade later. Destroyed my back and was gifted with perpetual pain and then a bit of diabeetus to boot.

After four years in a community college rebuilding the high school education I never got after leaving home at 17, I just got accepted at a university of california. Whoah. Whoah. Wishing my dad were alive to see the acceptance letter, but he died from cancer a few years ago and I have to put on a stone face about it because I don't have time to break down between the times I have to do things for other people, the times I have to do things for myself, and those secret moments in between.

All in all though I am utterly amazed, scared, elated, and confused about everything. That's the story of sad_winslow, how he got sad, and how he's taking steps to keep the sad away as best he can.
:greenface crapflood ends :greenface

So: I study, and I play video games, and occasionally I make things, like circuits or small wood projects or papercrafts or candles or soap or a thousand other things half-done, or bang on an acoustic guitar. I used to go driving a lot, touring the area, before my tiny gas-efficient car died and I got a gas-guzzling van and petrol prices skyrocketed. I also study some more after that.

I still want to hear from people, though: have you done anything lately? Read a book, taken up a hobby, played WoW and hit level cap on your DK, bought something, sold something, borrowed something, stolen something, started something or quit something or sacrificed a three-headed goat under a blood moon, built something or destroyed something? Caught an interesting disease or been cured of one? Found god, and put him back again?

Heck, you heard any good jokes? :)

Who told you about the goat? :eek:

PS - i dont type much here on this effing kindle thus the short reply.

oh, i know allll about the goat. :D

also, posting from a kindle? are you on a kindle fire? if so what do you think of it?

happy_loseslow is not as good of a handle.

I destroyed my neighbor's front door, 'long about last Thanksgiving...it was not my finest moment.

I didn't know front doors could cost that much.

What about happy_winhigh?

Oh god, what did you do to the front door? Did you have a "Shining" moment?

Crap_Binload on the bad days. Mad_GinSloe if I'm drinking. Rad_Manglow if I've been exposed to radiation lately. Snap_Wandshow if I was a wizard.

I am actually a wizard, or so my friends tell me.

Mostly though, Sad_Winslow. :)

I've just spend the weekend sleeping in a shed and playing in the orchestra for a small production of Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore and Trial by Jury. Thanks for asking, SW :)

I just did a three day hike down to the southernmost tip of Australia in late autumn and had amazingly good luck with the weather.

and I didn't drop in on Sandy Possum who lives right near there! The shame!

I just wrapped up a gluten-free cooking class and received rave reviews, but I can't really appreciate tham right now, because I'm in panic mode because it's the end of the school year and I have realized that change, no matter how well-planned, freaks me out almost as much as it does my kids.

Both of these things are amazing. A shed-sleeping orchestra player? Surviving outside in Australia for three days without dying by something horribly poisonous?

Yesterday I went to class and fell asleep in the park afterwards like a hobo.

Well, now that fines are paid and time served has been credited, I guess I can tell it.

I had a "Walking Tall" moment whilst being called a motherfucker and having said front door slammed in my face. Damn hollow doors, damn rotten hinges...still hollow doors and door frames are easily found at the salvage bldg materials stores.

All tolled I got out for less than $1000. Thank God for hollow doors.

On the plus side: I've now heard every single person who lives in that house call their barking little shit machine down, several times, and the dude has done it more than any of them.

Like a bad neighbor, Gravdigr's there.

Change is terrifying.

Just last night as I was laying in bed thinking I felt my chest start squeezing and it got difficult to breathe as I considered that today it's likely I'll have the non-refundable deposit paid on the rental in my new university town, that this is the last week of the last semester for me ever here at my community college with all the professors I've gotten to know and friends I've made, and so on. I don't handle big change well. Probably going to have a heart attack one of these days.

Gluten-free is kinda interesting. Also sometimes kinda gross in my experience. Congratulations on the class though, you must be doing something right with it:)

Oh god. One of those yap-and-crap neighbors, tough to blame you too much. I live in the rear of a duplex, and the front occupant has had the same kind of issue many times with the next door buildings to the point of the police being called to moderate. The duplex neighbors also have utterly rotten children that compound the problem with the dog neighbor. Good times all around - I just chill out on the porch of my back apartment and listen and laugh.

[Mr. Mackey]Change is bad, mmkay?[/Mr. Mackey]

I don't do too well w/change.

No wonder you're uncomfortable. You lot voted for Change You Can Believe In [TM], not Change That Actually Happens.

Clearly this is a very political thread talking about political things and I can easily see how we can blame Obama for all of our problems. If only I'd voted Ron Paul.

Huh?

Oh, shit definitely changed.

Sure did! I converted to Islam shortly before the election to gain acceptance with our Kenyan overlord. Down with infidels, damn your freedoms etc etc.

I hate politics. I hate politics right in the face.

I'm currently taking a break from studying for the Make Or Break organic chemistry final monday at 8am. If I don't pass the final, I don't pass the class, and that could put my whole transfer/future career/life in jeopardy. No stress.

Think I'm going to crawl my arse up out of starbucks and go for a walk.

A small update... I passed organic chemitry this morning.

I'm going to full university in the fall for reals.

Well done, mate! Be proud. Just because your dad isn't here to share his pride in you, doesn't mean you shouldn't feel it (I know whereof I speak).
Good for you!

Congratulations!!!

how'd you do in spelling?

;)

Are you suggesting he isn't very smrt?

I are gud in speling, but its gramer i aint lernt at yet.

Honestly today has been a blur. :mg:

I asked the professor if he'd grade my exam right after the session and he graciously did. I sat wringing my hands anxiously, about to keel over, when he said "You got a B. B as in Boy." I'm pretty sure I turned white as a sheet and _really_ started shaking as he shook my hand and congratulated me. After stammering some goodbyes I went outside for some air, and I barely even remember the rest of the day.

I think I went bowling, of all things. I haven't done that in 15 years.

Thanks for the support, folks. Now I don't even know what to do except remember how to take a breath before I start preparing to move for the fall and working towards completion on my bachelor's.

Completing this chemistry course and the one other class I took this semester netted me four associate's degrees (two general studies/transfer, one social and behavioral science, and one natural sciences and math) and a certificate in integrative studies in women and gender.

This is good. Man I know this sounds weird but I wish I knew some organic chem. I think I would understand some of the world just a little better. Good on ya Winslow.

Not nearly so weird as you think. It's a great thing to want.

Engage head in the clouds:

Though it's got a reputation, fairly rightfully deserved, as a bigtime "i think i'll change my major" career-wrecking classes, it's also been one of the biggest highlights of my academic career. Starting in Gen Chem, chemistry as a topic has been one of the most intellectually formative, mentally stimulating, and overall interesting and informational course sequences I've had to date in my academic career. Admittedly a big part of it is likely due to having an absolutely incredible set of professors at a small community college with close personal interactions. Even so, the material is as eye-opening as you let it be about the way *everything* works, from a quantum level to the way your body works to the paint on your car to the food that you eat, to the ocean and the air and the rocks and trees to the sun, stars, and planets.

In a real sense, chemistry isn't just vials and potions, it's an utterly fundamental way of viewing all of creation, from nature to man's own handiwork to mankind itself. It's a bit much to take in over just two semesters :) Four if you include General.

Throw in some essentials of physics for a real mind-blowing experience: if you can manage to see the relationships between the two disciplines, suddenly Science. You start to see things in a very special context that is both analytical and enlightening. You know when the news is making shit up and what the difference between propylene glycol in your twinkies and benzaldehyde in your cookies is and you can make a more informed decision when your local government asks you if it can start (or stop) fluoridating the water supply, and you learn down to an atomic level why it is that we breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Learn how soap works. We made biodiesel in one lab, even. It's shockingly easy. We also learned how to make TNT and a few other nasty things, though we of course didn't make anything like that in lab. You can read that bible-paper insert that's in with your pill bottles. Make sense of the back of a shampoo bottle when you're, uh, needing reading material in the bathroom.

Chemistry is marvelous.

I already got sad today that I won't have another class with the professor who has been a mentor and father figure for two and a half years of chem. But at least there is more chemistry to be had: I'll probably end up in biochem soon though, which is a whole different complicated ball game of seemingly never-ending reaction pathways in the body.

sad, you sound happy.

Congratulations!

Good for you!

thanks :D

now i just have to remember what it's like to breathe for a minute.

and i am so sore from bowling today!

A professor once told us, "All biology is really just chemistry. And all chemistry is really just physics." (He was, of course, a physics professor.)

Life is like a giant octopus, there is always another tentacle full of suckers ready to drag you down. They grow back too.

Winslow, it is great that you have "got" the vision of modern science.

In case you missed it, check this link
http://htwins.net/scale2/
which is a zoomable depiction of the universe, from the tiniest scales (quantum foam) to the known (and indeed, estimated) universe.

In high school, they thought they would make chemistry fun by having us pour stuff from one test tube to another and see what happened, but not bothering us with any explanation of why. As a hard-core nerd, I'd been doing that since I was eight, and it had become boring, so I dropped chemistry.
I have come to regret that, especially when in the final year my friends who were doing chem all finally were given the explanation and everything they had done for the last two years finally made coherent sense.
Meanwhile, I was at Thermopylae with Leonidas, valuing honour more than life itself, giving those Persians what for.

Hmmm, biochem and moving to California. So you're going to be a meth cook. :haha:

Haha, you get that a lot from physicists :) But really, I think the whole argument is silly: they're both just slightly different perspectives on the same thing. The way you look is determined by what you're looking for, I suppose you could say. For anybody in one field to be derisive of the other says to me that they don't get the big picture overall, and that's probably the biggest shame of all.

Well, I try to keep a broad view of it, anyways, thanks :)

Yeah, you know, without context for chemistry, it's like, so what? I can buy a packet of color-changing koolaid powder and do that in the kitchen and have some delicious diabetes beverage to boot. I'll learn just about as much from the world as pouring crap from one vial to another without know what's in there or what's happening. It has to be both show AND tell, else it's meaningless.

The payoff for all of that stuff doesn't seem to happen at the basic general chemistry level too much. Organic was where it was at for me, although I did love my Gen Chem sequence. I got it a lot easier than Organic. Ochem's Molecular Orbital Theory stuff in particular is amazing, though. Suddenly, why do magnets work? Well, I can tell you. Things about energy and colors and reactivity, photons and electrons and woo, all sorts of junk. Great stuff :)

But no education is complete without liberal arts, either. I took a small pile of history and english courses. The art history courses I took were also some of my favorite lessons. The teacher liked to tease me for being "the science guy" amongst the art majors at first - until I started busting out my own acquired knowledge of history and art, both classical and modern, and did a sort of painting/sculpture for my final project. It wasn't earth-shatteringly good, but I think it was more than was expected from "that science guy". It's deadly important to understand history, as it tells us where we're coming from and can guide us in where to go (or not to go) next; art too, as it lets us express ourselves as we move along the way. I like that dumb bumper sticker that says "EARTH: Without art it's just eh". Too true.

Good for you, Winslow! Post a pic of your "sort of painting/sculpture" in the creative expression thread, please, I'd like to see it!

Unfortunately I don't have it anymore, I don't think. Or at least, I haven't got a foggy clue where it's at or if it'd be in any condition to show. And honestly it wasn't that great. :) But it was "art".

Briefly, it was a midsized canvas with a black background; branching up from a common point at the bottom, on one side came red branches and on the other side blue, mingling together towards the middle of the painting much like arteries and veins. From the top center of the canvas was a thick stripe of bare/unpainted canvas going down maybe 1/3. At the base of this, I mounted a paint brush to look as though it was swiping down, wiping away the paint. I used a bit of stiff wire hidden in the bristles, puncturing the canvas and attached to the wood frame behind.

I don't remember the precise theme of the assignment or why I made what I did, but I do remember one interpretation I offered as "unmaking". Perhaps of spirit, or of body. It was fairly dark, but I had a lot of fun doing it.

What a pity it's disappeared. I hope you'll continue to dabble. Everyone should make some art now and again, I think.

Oh yeah. Well, I do other things too. :) I like to write, and to make things in the garage, and generally plot and scheme for many different things, few of which really see daylight. And I play instruments; mostly guitar, though I've got a banjo mouldering in the corner that I'm slowly working on understanding.

I recently engaged in a thouroughly amusing papercraft project that is as yet uncomplete; I hope to finish it before september as it's rather... ambitious in scope. And if I get it right, well... I'll get to live with the knowledge of a job well done.

I don't get to painting very much. It really takes a particular sort of inspiration that's a bit rare for me. It's great when it strikes and is a load of fun, though.

I try to keep the ol' brain not entirely in science mode 100% of the time, anyways. :)

Excellent! (Even the banjo!)